Civilization V mod lets you play as the nation from Papers, Please

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One of the biggest gaming surprises of last year was Lucas Pope’s Papers, Please. You assume the role of a checkpoint immigration officer in the fictionalized communist country of Arstotzka. The game is separated into days, and each day you man a never-ending immigration line, checking everyone’s documents to make sure they’re allowed into your country. It’s basically a matching game — making sure the info on the immigrants’ papers line up with legal documentation — and one that symbolizes extremely mind-numbing, soul-crushing, tedious work. For some reason, though, the game itself is fun, and the story it weaves is oddly compelling for a game about sitting in a box all day matching papers. If you beat Papers, Please but wanted to experience it in a new fashion, there is now a mod for Civilization V that lets you be the leader of the glorious Arstotzka.

The mod doesn’t change the way Civ V is played — the game is arguably still too slow and shallow for diehard Civ IV fans, for instance — but it adds Arstotzka as a new civilization, complete with a building, a unit, and dialogue. Cleverly, since a leader wasn’t really firmly established in Papers, Please, you assume the role of “Glorious Leader” in the mod. The unique additions are all in theme; the unit is a border guard that has no maintenance cost, but is much less effective outside friendly territory, while the building is the border checkpoint, which has no maintenance cost and reduces the spy stealing rate. The civilization also uses an orchestral remix of the theme from Papers, Please.

You can grab the mod over on Steam Workshop, where many wacky mods come from, like the one that shoves Octodad into Don’t Starve. The mod might not satisfy your urge to take a fine-toothed comb through fictional legal documents, but it’ll at least satisfy your urge to bring glory to Arstotzka.